3rd Party Services in the Liberalized Railway Sector

By 1990, the inefficient structure of the state monopoly railway sector in Europe revealed the need for reform. In this framework, the European Commission enacted Directive 91/440, which required member states to open some freight train operations to competition and to separate rail transport operations and infrastructure, at least at the accounting level, in order to revitalize the railway sector and increase the efficiency of transport activities. Subsequently, member states adopted different approaches and separated rail transportation operations from infrastructure. In many areas left to the initiative of the Member States, the Commission issued four “railway packages”, the first one in 2001 and the last one in 2016, which put in place the technical and legal arrangements needed to establish a free, interoperable, safe, competitive and efficient rail transport sector in the Union.
 
The approval processes of railway sub-systems (infrastructure, signaling, energy, vehicle) and components in EU member states are summarized in the diagram below.